You're like the mysterious trader from RE4: "I'll buy it at a high price!"
Ps I heard the RE6 demo is better than the full game, thoughts? And are you still really impressed with surround cues?

PPS my birthday is tomorrow, and my mom asked at dinner tonight what I wanted for a gift. I was like "I dunno mom, seems most things would be too expensive, or since what I really want is a job and my own place to live, I don't know if you can actually give me what I want." So she gives me her credit card to use tomorrow, $200 to spend on whatever I feel like I can't afford. Edited by Evshrug - 10/18/12 at 7:12pm

You're like the mysterious trader from RE4: "I'll buy it at a high price!"
Ps I heard the RE6 demo is better than the full game, thoughts? And are you still really impressed with surround cues?
PPS my birthday is tomorrow, and my mom asked at dinner tonight what I wanted for a gift. I was like "I dunno mom, seems most things would be too expensive, or since what I really want is a job and my own place to live, I don't know if you can actually give me what I want." So she gives me her credit card to use tomorrow, $200 to spend on whatever I feel like I can't afford.

I wanted to give my input on the new 2013 edition of the Astro A40s with the new mixamp

First, the A40s are improved slightly. They don't sound as hollow to me as the 2011 models, and they added some bass. But if you use the "pro mode" preset on the new mixamp for CoD or whatever, they sound the same as the old ones, at least to me.

Secondly, the microphone is god awful. For some reason, it sounds fine on my PC, but on Xbox, it is literally the worst mic I have ever used on a headset. My old Turtle Beach X11s were far superior in terms of mic quality.

Finally, there seems to be a design flaw with the new removable cord. If I turn my head to the left, it puts minor strain on the cord connected to the headset, and the right earcup cuts out. They're definitely plugged in all the way. Even worse, sometimes I will have to completely unplug the wire just to get both speakers working again. I'm returning the pair I have currently to see if it was just a fluke.

On to the mixamp!

It works pretty much the same as the old mixamp, only with the addition of EQ modes. The first mode called "pro mode" basically takes away a lot of bass, and it makes things sound really empty. It might work better with another headset that has a better mid and high range than the A40s.

The second EQ mode is flat.

The third mode is a media mode, which turns up the bass and the midrange. It actually really helped the A40s mids, but it made the bass way too loud for gaming.

Finally, there's a sports mode. It makes things sound far away, like you're in a stadium. At least, that's what they were going for. I guess it's for all those people that play sports games.

The mixamp is pretty nice. They changed a lot of the ports. They took away the RCA, the orange one(the name escapes me lol) and the toslink cable. Now, they have a fiber optic port(I think). They include a cord with a fiber optic on one end and toslink on the other. Really annoyed that they changed this. They can still be daisy chained together, and there's still a port to play your own music through the mixamp.

The other new feature of the mixamp is the live streaming feature. Supposedly, it takes all the audio going through the mixamp(game audio, chat, and your mic) and streams it out to your computer. I was trying to get this to work, but there wasn't any instruction manual included with the A40s(just a quick start guide) and the people on Astro's support page weren't all that helpful anyway.

I'll update the post with some pictures of the new A40s and the mixamp if you want :)

Originally Posted by Mad Lust Envy
That's actually an amp only (SA-31). The Compass 2 is indeed a DAC/AMP though.
You think the SA-31 can power Stax? Probably not. Lol.

Must have been looking at the wrong part of the product page there, heh...

The SA-31 won't power any electrostatic headphone by itself. There's a reason they all have special 5/6-pin plugs. Balanced output, for starters; one pin for each stator, plus bias voltage (230V for normal bias Stax, 580V for Pro bias Stax, 600V for Koss ESP/950, and I don't know what the Sennheiser Orpheus and Beyerdynamic ET-1000 setups were designed for).

But if the headphone output on the SA-31 really is that powerful, then maybe it's possible to use a cheap transformer box like an SRD-6 or SRD-7 and wire up the speaker wire terminals to a TRS jack that'll plug into the SA-31's headphone-out. I saw an eBay listing a while back where someone had done just that with an SRD-7/SB. As for why they were designed to connect to speaker amp terminals, it was likely assumed at the time that most people plunking down the cash for 'stats had nice integrated receivers to begin with.

I'm not willing to do the TRS jack thing with my own SRD-7/SB just yet, though. Maybe if I had a spare SRD-6 or SRD-7 of some sort, I'd do it for experimentation's sake and see what conventional headphone amps are up to the task.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evshrug
You're like the mysterious trader from RE4: "I'll buy it at a high price!"
Ps I heard the RE6 demo is better than the full game, thoughts? And are you still really impressed with surround cues?
PPS my birthday is tomorrow, and my mom asked at dinner tonight what I wanted for a gift. I was like "I dunno mom, seems most things would be too expensive, or since what I really want is a job and my own place to live, I don't know if you can actually give me what I want." So she gives me her credit card to use tomorrow, $200 to spend on whatever I feel like I can't afford.

That's quite a bit of money there...still not enough for a lot of things (like a high-end graphics card, or a Stax Lambda setup), but you could get a nice X-Fi Titanium HD for your desktop, or a lot of games (just wait 'til the Steam sales get rolling this holiday season!), or maybe a 3DS and a game...ultimately, you decide.

Too bad I can't send you any ice cream cake over the Internet for your birthday...

The orange port is a digital coaxial. I can understand why they took it off. Not a lot of newer equipment uses digital coaxials, and definitely not game systems. However, it was still beneficial as it can be paired up with a toslink to digital coax converter, which would allow for two digital inputs (I.e. PS3 and 360).

The new 3.5mm optic input is actually just perfect. All you need is to get the spdif 3.5mm adapter which are hella cheap, and allows you to use either digital coax or toslink cables (E17 has the same thing). The 3.5mm digital input is infinitely better than a standard toslink input, which are prone to breaking (I've broken two).Edited by Mad Lust Envy - 10/18/12 at 10:29pm

I wanted to give my input on the new 2013 edition of the Astro A40s with the new mixamp

First, the A40s are improved slightly. They don't sound as hollow to me as the 2011 models, and they added some bass. But if you use the "pro mode" preset on the new mixamp for CoD or whatever, they sound the same as the old ones, at least to me.

Secondly, the microphone is god awful. For some reason, it sounds fine on my PC, but on Xbox, it is literally the worst mic I have ever used on a headset. My old Turtle Beach X11s were far superior in terms of mic quality.

Finally, there seems to be a design flaw with the new removable cord. If I turn my head to the left, it puts minor strain on the cord connected to the headset, and the right earcup cuts out. They're definitely plugged in all the way. Even worse, sometimes I will have to completely unplug the wire just to get both speakers working again. I'm returning the pair I have currently to see if it was just a fluke.

On to the mixamp!

It works pretty much the same as the old mixamp, only with the addition of EQ modes. The first mode called "pro mode" basically takes away a lot of bass, and it makes things sound really empty. It might work better with another headset that has a better mid and high range than the A40s.

The second EQ mode is flat.

The third mode is a media mode, which turns up the bass and the midrange. It actually really helped the A40s mids, but it made the bass way too loud for gaming.

Finally, there's a sports mode. It makes things sound far away, like you're in a stadium. At least, that's what they were going for. I guess it's for all those people that play sports games.

The mixamp is pretty nice. They changed a lot of the ports. They took away the RCA, the orange one(the name escapes me lol) and the toslink cable. Now, they have a fiber optic port(I think). They include a cord with a fiber optic on one end and toslink on the other. Really annoyed that they changed this. They can still be daisy chained together, and there's still a port to play your own music through the mixamp.

The other new feature of the mixamp is the live streaming feature. Supposedly, it takes all the audio going through the mixamp(game audio, chat, and your mic) and streams it out to your computer. I was trying to get this to work, but there wasn't any instruction manual included with the A40s(just a quick start guide) and the people on Astro's support page weren't all that helpful anyway.

I'll update the post with some pictures of the new A40s and the mixamp if you want :)

So you have tried fps games, how does the positional audio cues stack up especially the rear cues?? In your opinion which mode works best for fps games??

I played a lot of MW2 with these. I would say the positioning is really good. I could definitely tell which direction the gunshots and footsteps were coming from. They're the only open back headphones I've used with the mixamp, so I can't compare them to the AD700s, etc. Rear cues were decent enough. The first eq that's called "pro mode" probably works the best. It tones done the bass response, but it keeps the mids and highs the same. So the explosions won't overpower the rest of the sound. But Astro said they're working on customizable presets, so hopefully you'll be able to program it however you like.

I played a lot of MW2 with these. I would say the positioning is really good. I could definitely tell which direction the gunshots and footsteps were coming from. They're the only open back headphones I've used with the mixamp, so I can't compare them to the AD700s, etc. Rear cues were decent enough. The first eq that's called "pro mode" probably works the best. It tones done the bass response, but it keeps the mids and highs the same. So the explosions won't overpower the rest of the sound. But Astro said they're working on customizable presets, so hopefully you'll be able to program it however you like.

Well...I think they're worth about $200. The MixAmp is definitely the best thing for Doubly Headphone if you're gaming on a console. But, Astro aren't currently selling the MixAmp by itself anymore. They say they will in the future. However, if this right ear cup issue that I mentioned above is an actual problem with the design of the headphone, then they're junk. I'm returning my current pair to test out if I just got a faulty unit or not. I'll update you guys on that hopefully later today

Depending on how fast my SA-31 comes in, I'm gonna try and keep the 250/600 DT990s as long as I can so I can test them both on it. Right now, if I had to choose, I'm still leaning on the 250ohm. The bass is just more involving for me. The very microscopic lead the 600ohm has in refinement isn't winning me over, when I find music more engaging on the 250ohm. One could also argue the E9K isn't driving the 600ohm up to par, which may be making them thinner sounding than the 250ohm.

The SA-31 has two warm enhancing options that may give the 600ohm enough fullness (assuming it needs it) to make me feel like I don't need the 250ohm however, which is why I'm hoping the SA-31 arrives quickly. I'll hold on to both until then.Edited by Mad Lust Envy - 10/19/12 at 5:51am